Stories tagged fiction

Happy people are never lonely. That’s what he said. Casey laughed, abruptly stopped, and glanced over at her summertime friend Joy who sat on the floor, fingering an ancient brass candelabrum. The candlelight flashed across her freckled young face—

He’s running so fast he can feel the sharp sides of the gravel puncture the soles of his shoes. His eyes scan the dirt road for his car. He repeats, over there ten times in his mind. He’s got to find it. Quickly.

You do not open the wound all at once. You do not slice or cut or slash. You stroke, as a lover's finger strokes the skin of her beloved. You slide the blade lightly over the surface. You do not think, I am hurting myself. You do not think, pain. You slid

I drown my sorrows in the wee hours with illiterate, tattooed, pierced men like David while imagining both my husband and father, bound with gaffer's tape, watching in horror from a cage atop the dresser.

You find a wall to lie down against and focus your eyes on an orange light. You no longer hear any music. You are lying down at the bottom of a dark, green, filthy pool, holding your breath and looking up at the sun.

See a girl like Lily sitting offstage in a wooden chair in a fourth-rate club somewhere, crying, holding on so hard to so little, and as it breaks your heart to watch; forgive me. Understand me. You can’t rescue us. We all deserve more.

Every day she loves me a little less, and justifies it by saying that there is less of me to love.
At some crucial, overlooked space in our life together, I used up my compassion and started to spend hers.

And the only time the TI-83 sees the light of day is when I'm rectifying my debit card purchases at such places as Kmart, Office Depot, Walmart, and Office Max, to make sure everything comes out even and good and perfect, a skill never learned in Trysics,

Just because I’m suicidal doesn’t mean I don’t care about whacking my head on some service railing ten stories down. The fact that I’m going to jump doesn’t lessen my fear of propellers or a broken back.